January 2012
This month in 2005 the power was disconnected from the Strowger exchanges and in 2007 the new Medstead SPT equipment was placed in service.
The joys of the Mid Hants, within weeks of completing the new Loco Department offices someone decides they want an additional extension provided, such is life.
Completed phone distribution point and IT Hub and patch panel for Loco Department offices.
December
Work has been completed moving the Loco Department phones and IT into the new building, this has allowed the removal of the last soldered block on the railway, a Box Connection 2A, which for many years was hidden behind lockers in the old building.
Work continues with the new Locomotive Department offices, phone and IT cables have been run the 75 metres to the Comms room and connected. Two new extensions were provided, the remaining extensions will be installed when the offices move.
November
Work has started fitting out the new Locomotive Department offices at Ropley for phones and computers.
Picture shows the Hub, patch panel, Wi-fi unit and phone distribution point during installation.
Shortly after singing the praises of the reliability of the Norstar system a local thunderstorm saw the demise of the exchange at Alresford.
Picture shows what is inside the 032 Central Control Unit.
This month in 2004 work started installing the Norstar exchange in the Station House at Ropley.
Screen shot of the Ropley TEA display, as can be seen of the present 6 inputs in use there are no current alarms, it is now possible to see when an alarm has been acknowledged either locally or remotely. This screen shot was taken at a location off the railway.
To provide an alarm Receive Attention signal from Alresford to the other stations an additional relay was required.
A new relay set has been made, ZA relay is for the Ropley alarm. The spool resistors are for a planned new Alresford TEA installation and the empty spaces for the interface relays needed.
October
A glorious sunny day at Ropley, Up Home Signal.
As not a great deal is happening at the moment it was thought a good idea to record what was happening of interest this month in years gone by - in 2004 work started connecting the Norstar in its new home in the Ropley Station house, 2007 saw the phone moved to the relocated Ropley shop and in 2009 work was under way on the SPTs at Alton.
The seventh CressNet wi-fi unit has been fitted, this figure does not include the wi-fi units at Alresford.
While planning the route for new phone and IT connections from the new Ropley building to the existing comms room this long forgotten block was discovered in a cupboard, it is assumed the circuits were used by the old Strowger system and can be recovered but will need to be checked first. Most of the internal station wiring was renewed when the Norstar system was placed in service.
All the wiring was found to be redundant, the block has been cleaned up and will be reused as part of the new Locomotive Department office cabling scheme, waste not want not.
September
A poor quality picture below showing a new addition to the system, the prototype of TEA at Ropley - Telephone Equipment Alarms, a better name is being looked into.
The unit is connected to the exchange alarm system and will send an e-mail or text message via CressNet if one of the alarm inputs changes status. A number of other facilities are available but at present only alarm monitoring is being used.
As the unit has an IP address alarms can be checked remotely.
The VDU is displaying the alarm status for the site, see better picture above.
August
Little activity has taken place recently apart from replacing the CRT monitors in the 4 exchanges with flat screen LCD types, these are used to display the Norstar call logger output as well as give internet access.
Progress on the building on the first day of the month.
It appears the contractors will be running the internal phone/IT cables but no mention has been made about the connections to the outside world so assume we will being doing that.
July
Since the Ropley comms rack was installed the number of computer circuits and patching cords has increased considerably, there are more cords round the back of the rack out of sight.
To tidy matters up a patching panel has been provided, fourth item up, 3 circuits have been moved to it so far.
This is a nice job for a rainy day when there is nothing better to do.
Anyone know what the item below was used for, a selector bank multiple that will fit into a relay set shelf.
Additions added to the following sections - Exchanges - Alton and Medstead, External Conections and Signal box telephones.
June
Recently found is this picture by Eric Langley showing the construction of the S and T building at Medstead, date unknown.
March/April
Not a great deal to report at present, the system is running well and needs little attention.
Three additional Wi-fi units have been fitted at Ropley, it seems staff like to take their laptops and update rosters, catch up on e-mails etc.
Wi-fi is a lot easier than giving a laptop an IP address and a physical LAN connection.
February
A request was made recently to provide a phone and computer network connection for a new office in the middle of the Locomotive workshop at Ropley.
Until the Wheel drop Building was erected there used to be a phone in that area, unfortunately the person who dug the pit obviously knew more about digging holes than about running cables. Somehow the existing cable to the building was routed under the new pit and in the process developed a fault, no allowance was made to enable the cable to be replaced, end of service to the shed.
Another of those jobs where those who could have done it properly first time were not spoken to.
As there were some spare cable pairs between the Exchange and Signal box a new Disribution Point has been created in the Wheel Drop Building, then by a rather involved route a new cable goes to the site of the proposed office.
It is planned for the computer service to be provided initially by using a VDSL unit. If the office remains after the Stage 2 building is completed it will be a simple matter of providing a Cat5 link from there.
One of those jobs to be done when there was nothing better to do was tidy up the cables between the Norstar equipment at Alton and the distribution case, on the right in the picture below.
Finally completed as that remained to do was replace the two lids on the cable tray.
Work has been completed in the Carriage Workshop and the two pictures below show the CressNet IT equipment along with the local telephone distribution point.
Early February - Work continues to complete the installation in the Carriage Workshop, a new distribution point will be provided and the IT equipment moved to its permanent home.
January
The year has got of to a good start with most of the phone and IT cables run in the rebuilt Carriage workshop at Ropley.
The work was greatly assisted by the Contractors running a couple of cable ducts under the floor, one from the trackside to the location of the new distribution point and the other from the front to the back of the Carriage building.
Thanks to Bob, Brian and John for their assistance running cables.
Phone service and Internet access reprovided to the Boiler Workshop.
Remote equipment installed in the building for Internet access.
At present located in the Boiler Workshop, to be moved to the Carriage Workshop when the building work there is completed.